gfx drivers

Forum thread started by xsive on Mon, 2013-04-01 19:56

Any updates on graphics drivers for newer nvidia chipsets? Pleaseeeeee only thing not working for me on Haiku, can't use a nasty vesa resolution :D

Thanks

Paul

Comments

Re: gfx drivers

Nvidia doesn't release information on howto write drivers for their cards. Unless Nvidia gets convinced to do so it is very complicated to support.

Re: gfx drivers

I know open source drivers for Nvidia and Amd cards exist in Linux. Could it be ported over in some form like Gallium 3D or used somehow to help make native ones?

Re: gfx drivers

> nasty vesa resolution
Haiku supports native resolutions with its VESA driver on most cards/monitors. You should file a bug report or ask for help on IRC if it doesn't for you. The VESA driver indeed is very fast and you really wouldn't gain anything from the NVIDIA driver right now.

Regarding Gallium drivers … AFAIK at least one developer (kallisti5) is working on that but it has nothing to do with mode setting. Gallium is part of Mesa (if I'm not mistaken) and that is about 3D acceleration (OpenGL).

Re: gfx drivers

foobear wrote:

Regarding Gallium drivers … AFAIK at least one developer (kallisti5) is working on that but it has nothing to do with mode setting. Gallium is part of Mesa (if I'm not mistaken) and that is about 3D acceleration (OpenGL).

I'm not talking Gallium drivers exactly, someone already explained me, that it's for hardware 3D acceleration only, I've mentioned linux drivers in general, which for the most part support mode setting and decent 2D acceleration. Say Noveau?

Re: gfx drivers

Well I'm looking at getting a 1080p resolution on my desktop with an nvidia card but the resolution doesn't go that high in mode setting, so should I file that as a bug or is that a vesa limitation?

Thanks

Re: gfx drivers

foobear wrote:

Haiku supports native resolutions with its VESA driver on most cards/monitors.

This is the exact opposite of my understanding. Instead, the VESA driver supports VESA graphics modes, which don't include any widescreen resolutions.

So, unless you have a 4:3 ratio monitor or one of the mythical motherboard / video card combos that support native resolution with no special drivers that I keep hearing about, you will not have native resolution with an Nvidia graphics card in Haiku. :(

Re: gfx drivers

That depends on the graphics card what it reports back in Vesa configuration. Some graphics card don't report any interesting resolutions.

Re: gfx drivers

I don't mean to be confrontational, but can you name one motherboard (or CPU) and graphics card combination that does?

Re: gfx drivers

look to AROS they have ported Nouveau driver, maybe this can help.

Re: gfx drivers

Not offhand, usually the graphics card has a hardcoded list of supported graphics mode sometimes many and/or good ones, sometimes short and/or bad (<1024x768).

In the good ones the native resolution of the screen and standard HD resolutions usually exist at least.

Re: gfx drivers

lukves wrote:

look to AROS they have ported Nouveau driver, maybe this can help.

I guess they have at least couple of dedicated developers in that field, knowledgeable enough to make a successful Noveau port happen. Yay for AROS guys.

Re: gfx drivers

Likely a port of Linux DRM/KMS (direct rendering manager / Kernel Mode Setting) is what Haiku needs to get decent graphic driver support beyond VESA.

The AROS nouveau driver did a partial port of DRM if I recall correctly, meanwhile FreeBSD is currently paying a developer to port Linux DRM/KMS to FreeBSD.

Being able to leverage the existing Linux graphics drivers would give Haiku a wide range of graphics support.

Re: gfx drivers

The motherboard (and its BIOS) is only part of the equation for onboard graphics. Anyway, all Intel onboard graphics chips that I seen in quite some time do that, and I also heard of some AMD graphics boards that do that. I've been using Intel chips for a few years now, and the only thing where I notice that I don't use the driver is tearing on video replay, and the missing overlay.

I'm not so familiar with nVidia, though.

Re: gfx drivers

My 9660gt only gets 4:3 vesa graphics